Page 53 of Freak Camp
Tobias didn’t budge.“I’ll pay.”
Victor threw his head back and laughed.“Ain’t you greedy?”
Sure, Tobias thought.Whatever.He didn’t expect Victor to turn him down.But the guard wouldn’t make it easy for him either.
Victor sauntered farther into the alley, into the shadows between the buildings and the one blind spot between cameras.He leaned against the aluminum siding behind him, his feet in a wide stance, and he unbuckled his belt.“Get on with it.”
Tobias dropped to his knees.
Afterward Victor sighed.“Wait there, freak.I’ll see what we’ve got.”
Tobias didn’t react, not even to the suggestion he would get nothing for his trouble.He knew better than to even think of any threats if Victor never came back with anything.There wasn’t anything he could do—except hope that if he stayed where he was without moving, soon he wouldn’t feel the cold or anything at all.
Victor did come back, though.He tossed down two ratty blankets, showing holes big enough for Tobias to put his head through.
Tobias didn’t feel anything at the loss of the blanket quality he’d had before.He wasn’t surprised.This was how it went in Freak Camp.
Lesson number one of orientation: no matter how bad you thought it was, life always got worse.The longer you stayed alive, the worse it would get.
Jake had made him a promise more than three years ago now, and Tobias wouldn’t lose faith in him—because he was Jake, he would eventually come to get Tobias out—but Tobias didn’t expect to make it that long.Even so, he had to keep trying to stay alive.If he gave up, it was like saying he didn’t believe or trust Jake, and he did, more than any other truth of Freak Camp that he knew in his bones.
He still had Jake’s visits.They weren’t as frequent as they used to be, but Jake always looked glad to see him.As Tobias got older, he was more and more at a loss to understandwhyJake cared about him, why he was different to Jake from any other monster.He couldn’t spend time questioning it, though.It was, had always been, the only thing that made Tobias’s life remotely worthwhile.You didn’t question what you were afraid of losing, what you feared more than anything else that might happen to you.You just had to accept it and hope:tomorrow, perhaps tomorrow, he will come again.
Tobias got up slowly, staggering more than once at the pain he finally felt in his knees, and he turned to trudge back inside, blankets in hand.
***
Jake did not come thenext day.Instead, during breakfast, Tobias found the shapeshifter girl inching closer to him on the bench.He ignored her until she said, “I’m Kayla.”
I don’t want to know your name, Tobias nearly said.You were luckier than you can imagine, but you’re going to get hurt soon, and bad.They usually go for the girls before the boys.I don’t think you’re going to last long, and I don’t want to know your name.
But he didn’t say any of that, because it wouldn’t have helped anything.He couldn’t remember what Becca had told him in the beginning, how she had made him understand.“Tobias,” he said at last, because there was no harm in telling her his name.It was better than what everyone else—everyone besides Jake—called him.
She scooted closer, nearly touching his side now, right there in the hall where everyone could see.Tobias moved away.“Don’t.”Then, because he couldn’t help himself, and maybe this was a chance someone would actually listen to him: “You can’t let them know what you care about or want.”
She stared at him, too shocked and bewildered to even show hurt.Something in her eyes looked raw and naked, and Tobias looked away.He didn’t like it.It made him feel things, things he hadn’t felt since Becca was around, and they would only get him hurt worse in the end.
He shut down the thought of Becca as he had every time she’d come to mind over the last year, since he’d learned to survive as Pretty Freak.
If this shapeshifter girl could understand even a little how Freak Camp worked, there wouldn’t be any more scenes like last night.Maybe she wouldn’t be among those broken in—one fewer monster he’d have to hear screaming.
So he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking down at the table so no one could tell he was talking to her, and spoke.“I mean it.You can’t let any of them know what you want, or they’ll take it away and use it against you.Don’t trust any of the other monsters, no matter how nice they act—they aren’t your friends, they’re just using you for whatever they can get, and they don’t care what happens to you.You shouldn’t trust me either.Monsters don’t have friends, especially not in Freak Camp.
“You can’t fight any of the guards.Don’t try, and don’t even think about questioning or arguing.Just do what they say, give them what they want.It’ll be worse otherwise.”He stopped there, before the wealth of details he could have given her on what to do when they decided they wanted her body.Crusher probably would first.He liked those that seemed most helpless, innocent, most likely to squirm.But Tobias couldn’t tell her about that.It wasn’t a mercy or kindness, but he wouldn’t do it.Hopefully when the time came, she’d remember his advice about not fighting, and they wouldn’t bring out the silver nails.
Kayla said nothing.Tobias chanced a sideways glance at her from under his hair.
She had bent her head down, like him, and was picking at her fingernail.“Where’d you get the blankets last night?”
Tobias shifted, but he made it look like he was just moving as he ate.Never a good idea for the guards to get interested in the conversation of a couple of monsters.“I paid for them.”
She kept staring, though not as directly as before.“With what?Do you have money?”
Tobias resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands, to block out her eyes and the mess hall.What could he tell her?Should he tell this frightened girl about blowing Crusher when it looked like what he really wanted to do was cut his name into your back with a silver knife?Should he tell her what Victor liked him to do with his tongue or what to say to Karl to get him hard?
He risked a glance at her, into her clear, pretty eyes—not even her eyes, she’s a shifter, remember—and knew he couldn’t.Becca hadn’t told him, though looking back, he knew now where all those extra meals and blankets had come from.
But he wouldn’t lie to Kayla either.Pretending it would get better would just kill her faster.
